plumbean

The Big Orange Splot

The Big Orange Splot is a children's picture book by Daniel Manus Pinkwater. It was published in 1977 by Scholastic Inc, New York. The age range is ages 4-8, and all 32 pages have a full color picture, which helps the child visualize when reading.

Plot

The main character, Mr. Plumbean, lives on a "neat street" where all the houses look the same. A seagull flies over his house and drops a can of bright orange paint on his roof, but instead of repainting his house to look like all the others on the street, Mr. Plumbean paints it to look like all his dreams. His neighbors send people to talk him into repainting his house to look like theirs, but everyone he talks to ends up painting their houses like their dreams also. In the end, all the neighbors say:

"Our street is us and we are it. Our street is where we like to be, and it looks like all our dreams."

The drawings were made with markers, and if one looks closely one can see the marker lines.